1
Overview
Religion
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Introduction
• Religion is defined, following Wallace, as belief and ritual concerned
with supernatural beings, powers, and forces.
• So defined, religion is a cultural universal.
• Neanderthal mortuary remains provide the earliest evidence of what
probably was religious activity.
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3
Animism
• Tylor first studied religion anthropologically and developed a
taxonomy of religions.
• Animism was seen as the most primitive and is defined as a belief in
souls that derives from the first attempt to explain dreams and like
phenomena.
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Mana and Taboo
• Mana is defined as belief in an immanent supernatural domain or lifeforce, potentially subject to human manipulation.
• The Polynesian and Melanesian concepts of mana are contrasted.
– Melanesian mana is defined as a sacred impersonal force that is much like
the Western concept of luck.
– Polynesian mana and the related concept of taboo are related to the more
hierarchical nature of Polynesian society.
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Magic and Religion
• Magic refers to supernatural techniques intended to accomplish
specific aims.
• Magic may be imitative (as with voodoo dolls) or contagious
(accomplished through contact).
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Anxiety, Control, Solace
• Magic is an instrument of control, but religion serves to provide
stability when no control or understanding is possible.
• Malinowski saw tribal religions as being focused on life crises.
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Rituals
• Rituals are formal, performed in sacred contexts.
• Rituals convey information about the culture of the participants and,
hence, the participants themselves.
• Rituals are inherently social, and participation in them necessarily
implies social commitment.
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Rites of Passage
• Rites of passage are religious rituals which mark and facilitate a
person's movement from one (social) state of being to another (e.g.,
Plains Indians’ vision quests).
• Rites of passage have three phases:
– Separation – the participant(s) withdraws from the group and begins
moving from one place to another.
– Liminality – the period between states, during which the participant(s) has
left one place but has not yet entered the next.
– Incorporation – the participant(s) reenters society with a new status having
completed the rite.
• Liminality is part of every rite of passage and involves the temporary
suspension and even reversal of everyday social distinctions.
• Communitas refers to collective liminality, characterized by enhanced
feelings of social solidarity and minimized distinctions.
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Totemism
• Rituals play an important role in creating and maintaining group
solidarity.
• In totemic societies, each descent group has an animal, plant, or
geographical feature from which they claim descent.
– Totems are the apical ancestor of clans.
– The members of a clan did not kill or eat their totem, except once a year
when the members of the clan gathered for ceremonies dedicated to the
totem.
• Totemism is a religion in which elements of nature act as sacred
templates for society by means of symbolic association.
• Totemism uses nature as a model for society.
– Each descent group has a totem, which occupies a specific niche in nature.
– Social differences mirror the natural order of the environment.
– The unity of the human social order is enhanced by symbolic association
with and imitation of the natural order.
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Religion and Cultural Ecology:
Sacred Cattle in India
• Ahimsa is the Hindu doctrine of nonviolence that forbids the killing of
animals.
• Western economic development experts often use this principle as an
example of how religion can stand in the way of development.
– Hindus seem to irrationally ignore a valuable food source (beef).
– Hindus also raise scraggly and thin cows, unlike the bigger cattle of
Europe and the U.S.
• These views are ethnocentric and wrong as cattle play an important
adaptive role in an Indian ecosystem that has evolved over thousands
of years
– Hindus use cattle for transportation, traction, and manure.
– Bigger cattle eat more, making them more expensive to keep.
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Social Control
• The power of religion affects action.
• Religion can be used to mobilize large segments of society through
systems of real and perceived rewards and punishments.
• Witch hunts play an important role in limiting social deviancy in
addition to functioning as leveling mechanisms to reduce differences in
wealth and status between members of society.
• Many religions have a formal code of ethics that prohibit certain
behavior while promoting other kinds of behavior.
• Religions also maintain social control by stressing the fleeting nature
of life.
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Religion and Social Control in
Afghanistan
• This article describes the social conditions in Afghanistan under
Taliban rule.
• The Taliban are invoking a very strict interpretation of the Koran as the
basis for social behavior.
• Women are required to wear veils, remain indoors, and are not allowed
to be with males who are not blood relatives.
• Men are required to grow bushy beards and are barred from playing
cards, flying kites, and keeping pigeons.
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Kinds of Religion
• Religious forms vary from culture to culture, but there are correlations
between political organization and religious type.
• Religious Practitioners and Types
– Wallace defined religion as consisting of all a society’s cult institutions
(rituals and associated beliefs) and developed four categories from this.
– In Shamanic religions, shamans are part-time religious intermediaries who
may act as curers--these religions are most characteristic of foragers.
– Communal religions have shamans, community rituals, multiple nature
gods, and are more characteristic of food producers than foragers.
– Olympian religions first appeared with states, have full-time religious
specialists whose organization may mimic the states, and have potent
anthropomorphic gods who may exist as a pantheon.
– Monotheistic religions have all the attributes of Olympian religions,
except that the pantheon of gods is subsumed under a single eternal,
omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent being.
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Christian Values
• Max Weber linked the spread of capitalism to the values central to the
Protestant faith: independent, entrepreneurial, hard working, futureoriented, and free thinking.
• The emphasis Catholics placed on immediate happiness and security,
and the notion that salvation was attainable only when a priest
mediated on one’s behalf, did not fit well with capitalism.
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World Religions
• In the U.S. Protestants outnumber Catholics, but in Canada the reverse
is true.
• Religious affiliation in North America varies with ethnic background,
age, and geography.
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Revitalization Movements
• Religious movements that act as mediums for social change are called
revitalization movements.
• The colonial-era Iroquois reformation led by Handsome Lake is an
example of a revitalization movement.
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Syncretisms
• A syncretism is a cultural mix, including religious blends, that emerge
when two or more cultural traditions come into contact.
– Examples include voodoo, santeria, and candomlé.
– The cargo cults of Melanesia and Papua New Guinea are syncretisms of
Christian doctrine with aboriginal beliefs.
• Syncretisms often emerge when traditional, non-Western societies have
regular contact with industrialized societies.
• Syncretisms attempt to explain European domination and wealth and to
achieve similar success magically by mimicking European behavior
and symbols.
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A New Age
• Since the 1960s, there has been a decline in formal organized religions.
• New Age religions have appropriated ideas, themes, symbols, and
ways of life from the religious practices of Native Americans,
Australian Aborigines, and east Asian religions.
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A Pilgrimage to Walt Disney World
• Walt Disney World functions much like a sacred shrine that is a major
pilgrimage destination
– It has an inner, sacred center surrounded by an outer more secular domain.
– Parking lot designations are distinguished with totemlike images of the
Disney cast of characters.
• The monorail provides travelers with a brief liminal period as they
cross between the outer, secular world into the inner, sacred center of
the Magic Kingdom.
• Within the Magic Kingdom
– Spending time in the Magic Kingdom reaffirms, maintains, and solidifies
the world of Disney as all of the pilgrims share a common status as
visitors while experiencing the same adventures.
– Most of the structures and attractions at the Magic Kingdom are designed
to reaffirm and recall a traditional set of American values.
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Recognizing Religion
• It is difficult to distinguish between sacred and secular rituals as
behavior can simultaneously have sacred and secular aspects.
• Americans try to maintain a strict division between the sacred and the
profane, but many other societies like the Betsileo do not.
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